4. FINANCING OF INDIGENOUS TECHNOLOGY UTILIZATION

The spending on the utilization of R&D results has traditionally been a function of the country's spending on S&T. A system for the financing and promotion of national S&T activities is generally made up of a number of elements, each designed to :

• Either enable a particular body to draw funds from various sources of finance and allocate them to certain institutions, for the carrying out of specific S&T activities, and/or

• Encourage certain institutions to carry out specific S&T activities and/or to support them financially.

Financing of new technology is one of the major problems hindering the process of the commercialization. Many commercial and development banks, as well as other financial institutions, loan money for industrial projects, including those which employ indigenous technology. As the practice tells us, project-loan syndication is mostly available for high-technology imported from other countries.

Although, there is no bar on loan-syndication for the development of indigenous technologies, there are hardly any examples of such activity in the developing countries. There are, however, examples where utilization of indigenous technology was delayed substantially, to the eventual demise of its competitiveness and loss of market. The 'manufacture of coal briquettes' (in Pakistan) is one such example where the reluctance of development-finance institution (DFI) to invest caused substantial delay and so the market for cheap fuel was taken over by other substitutes like natural gas. It usually becomes difficult in developing countries to convince the loan giving agencies to invest in such projects that have a local technology content.